[Lemmy]

ooh, i was thinking about something like this today, here's what i came up with regarding cities and colonizing:
First from a gameplay point of view,
Colonizing would work in 2 stages, first the construction stage, and then the settling stage.
The construction stage would be done by units like engineers, they are able to builf certain size cities, ranging from tiny to huge, after the cities are built, colonist unit go and settle the cities with the first population, and get thing running. After that other people can be brought there by using conventional transports.

Now from a modding point of view:
Every system map would contain lots of asteroid fields, an asteroid field would represent a location suitable for citybuilding.
Then there would be some kind of engineer "component" with the stellar manip ability to create planets.
Suns could represent dangerous points on a planet, a volcano for example, then the "star destroyer" would be used on a component to trigger the volcano, and destroy the system.

Regarding bases, use them as fortresses, makes sense too, you can build 'm everywhere, it can store/house fighters/soldiers and resupply them.
Weapon platforms, guard towers perhaps?

Ships would have no weapons then, right?